Burden of proof is on the industry
by Mary Ellen Walling, Campbell River Mirror, May 03, 2011
Re: “Support move to closed containment,” Brian Gunn, April 29, 2011
When Brian Gunn talks about the weight of evidence in the sea lice and salmon farming debate, he quite noticeably has to ignore quite a bit of key research that doesn’’t support his hypothesis.
While he is correct that there is proof of interaction between sea lice, wild salmon and farmed salmon, the conclusion that well-managed farms do not kill wild fish is also a result of extensive research.
Those papers include studies where, for example, lice were directly introduced to fish to see what level of harm they caused. From that we learned that only very small Pink salmon may be at risk from sea lice – and our farm management practices have been developed to address this specific concern.
Mr. Gunn also doesn’’t mention two published studies that show that sea lice numbers have no correlation to wild salmon returns. One of those was a highly publicized piece released by the University of California Davis in December last year authored by Gary Marty, Sonja Saksida and Terrence Quinn.
The other though, received much less attention despite its author: In October of 2010, Alexandra Morton, Rick Routledge, Amy McConnell and Martin Krokosek published a revised study addressing errors found in their original calculation which said sea lice would decimate pink salmon in the Broughton. With the recalibrated model, even their study shows no difference in returns relating to sea lice levels. In their words: “The survival of the pink salmon cohort was not statistically different from a reference region without salmon farms (http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/10/09/icesjms.fsq14...).”
Our companies have a high level of accountability which they feel acute responsibility for. When we make statements about mitigation of impact, operational standards and monitoring results, we have to be able to prove what we say. Sea lice is an example of where a concern has been raised and millions of dollars and years of time have been spent to better understand and address any potential issues.
There is much to learn about our natural environment and our companies are committed to enabling that research, getting results and putting into practice standards that will ensure the protection of our wild ocean.
We’ve already shown in many ways our commitment to that and that work will always continue.
Mary Ellen Walling
Executive Director,
BCSFA
Campbell River
The letter above was in response to the following Letter:
Support move to closed containment
by Brian Gunn, Campbell River Mirror April 28, 2011
The debate surrounding the impact of farmed salmon on wild salmon populations often focuses on the issue of sea lice.
Wild salmon supporters correlate the decline of wild fish to the sea lice harboured on fish farms, a theory refuted by the farms due to the lack of directly supporting scientific evidence.
It is true that there is no unequivocal evidence to show a salmon farm sea louse leaving a farm, attaching to a wild salmon juvenile and then seeing that fish die as a direct result of weakness and infection caused by the louse. However, what independent scientists do see is that when wild juvenile salmon leave their spawning grounds they have no parasites, and when they approach the farms they are inundated with sea lice. Later many of these fish die.
The argument surrounding sea lice is like so many difficult environmental debates we are now facing. Because the ecosystems we live in are so large and so complex, it is often virtually impossible to find direct scientific correlations between cause and effect.
Instead we must look at the weight of evidence to support one argument versus the other.
In the example of air pollution we do not have specific evidence that pollutants released by one individual factory lead to breathing problems. However it has been accepted that the cumulative worsening of air quality is harmful to human health. Therefore we protect ourselves and limit emissions.
Sea lice incubated by farms are not the only cause for depletion of wild salmon stocks, but they are a significant factor.
It is likely that wild fish will be long gone before we find undeniable evidence of the link between open-net fish farms and the disappearance of wild salmon. We need to act in good faith with the weight of evidence we have available to us now.
We are appealing to the press to bring this serious issue in to the election debate and ask each candidate to support moving fish farms to closed containment, away from our wild salmon.
Brian Gunn
President of the Wilderness Tourism Association
